Flight to Darkness (22 page)

Burkette stood. He didn’t say a world. He
didn’t look at Gallagher or me. Turning, he walked into the studio,
brushing by the deputy as if he were so much lumber stacked against
the wall.

I wondered if the deputy would ever get
another chance. He would certainly have reason to look grim
now.

“
Clyde,” Gallagher said. “Clyde,
you saw him with the gun, there. Damn it, you know I couldn’t—he’d
have killed me—maybe killed us both. Clyde, can’t you—”

Burkette ignored him as completely as if he
weren’t even in the room.

“
Oh, Geez,” Gallagher
said.

Leda came through the kitchen. “Car’s ready,”
she said.

“
Don’t do it,” Burkette said to
her. “Don’t go with him. I’m just telling you. Don’t.”

“
Oh, God,” Gallagher
moaned.

Kneeling carefully, I kept the forty-five
squarely on Burkette and picked up the other two guns. I stuck them
in the waistband of my shorts.

Gallagher sat on the couch, slouched over, and
stared at his feet. His smooth hair was tousled now. His moment to
act was gone and he knew it.

Over my shoulder, I said, “Go get in the car,
Leda.”

“
Don’t do it,” Burkette
said.

I heard her move behind me. “Eric,
I—”

“
Get in the car and start the
engine. I’ll drive.”

“
All right.” Her voice was a pale
whisper.

Burkette didn’t speak. I heard her go out and
right away the smooth roar of the big car’s engine sloughed through
the night, parrying with the moan of the wind.

“
I didn’t do this,” I said, nodding
toward the body on the floor. “Sorry you won’t believe me. It’d
make things much easier.”

“
Well—Maybe I do, now,” Burkette
said.

“
Never mind that,” I said. He knew
there was no use attempting wiliness now. Anything went. “I’m going
to see what I can find out. Somehow I’m going to lock this door and
the other door. If you come out of here before we’ve gone, well—” I
shrugged.

Burkette turned his back. I went on out. There
was no way to lock the inside door. From the kitchen, Burkette
called to me.

“
We’ll get you, Eric. Just remember
that. You won’t get away.”

“
We’ll get you,” Gallagher called.
He was trying to come back into the good graces of his
superior.

“
Shut up, you fool!” Burkette
said.

I went on out, locked the door, and leaped for
the car. Leda was huddled in the front seat.

I turned the sedan around the barn, through a
field and over onto the sand road. We were doing fifty by the time
we approached the main highway.

“
Somebody’s coming,” Leda said.
“Look out.”

It was a girl in red shorts, walking on the
side of the road. Then I saw it was Norma. She was on my side, and
as the car flashed by, we looked straight at each other. She
recognized me.

“
Eric!” she yelled. “Eric . . .”
But the rest of her words were lost as the tires screamed on the
smooth, broad blacktop road.

Chapter 17

Clouds of driving rain like gusts of steam
broke across the front of the car. The tires whined on the
water-flushed highway as we droned ahead at a steady eighty-five.
It was a sweet car to drive and we could very easily need all that
power before long.

“
Where we going?” Leda said with a
tense note of fear. “You’ve got to run, Eric. Run fast and
far.”

“
Got to find the Hewitts,” I
said.

“
But why? What good will that
do?”

“
I don’t know.”

“
Then forget them, for God’s sake,
Eric.”

“
Do you know where they
live?”

“
Darling, this is not time to think
about the Hewitts. You’ve got to think about us. They’ll be looking
for you.”

I glanced at her. She strained her white face
toward me and I cursed silently. I didn’t want her to go to pieces;
it wouldn’t be like her to do that. I hoped to hell she would hold
up. She had to hold up.

I had turned away from Cypress Landing but I
knew I’d have to find a back road in order to cut around the town
and inland. It was a good thing it was this country—once I’d been
familiar with every trail, cow path, and woods road in the section.
But it would be bad on a night like this. The swamps and the jungle
threatened the shoulders of those roads wherever you went and this
rain wouldn’t help matters.

“
Maybe the Hewitts had nothing to
do with this,” I said. “But maybe they’ll know something. They’re
my only lead.”

“
You’re going to play
detective.”

“
You can call it that.” I looked
over at her. She was a beautiful, white-faced, frightened woman; so
beautiful that for a flashing instant I wondered if I wasn’t glad
all this had happened. We were together again, all the way clean.
But I swore at myself for that, too. She was curled up with her
back to the door, her coat thrown wide, her skirt in her lap. Long
legs with the sheen of gold sloped into the shadows below the
dashboard, gleaming palm’s widths of soft thigh winked above the
tops of sheer hose. With glistening red lips, full and warm, and
with eyes that could burn with passion, I loved her. I loved the
wildness inside her, the strands of fury that cut through her soul,
the urgent need that powered her being.

“
Watch the road, Eric.”

“
I am.”

“
Okay.” She was thinking. “Listen,
Eric. They’ll be after you, we’ve got to hide someplace. For a
while, at least. Someplace where we can think.” She moved closer to
me and her breast brushed my arm.

“
Yeah, you’re right. But where?
Anyway, I’ve got to see the Hewitts.”

“
All right, all right.” She hauled
the two guns from the waistband of my swimming shorts and put them
in the glove compartment. They’d been gouging my middle. “But then
we can go to Frank’s cabin.”

I didn’t know about that, didn’t know he had
one, or where it was.

“
Nobody’ll ever find us there,” she
said. “He had it built quite a while ago. It’s way in the jungle.
On a river. Nobody else lives anywhere around, and it’s reached
only by an old trail of a dirt road.” She described where it was. I
remembered the section and it was hellish. It’d be a good place to
hide out, all right. The country would be flooded out there
tonight.

“
You sure nobody knows about where
that place is?”

She gripped my leg with her hand. “No. Nobody.
I—I went out there with Frank a couple of times.”

“
Don’t tell me.” I swerved the car
sharply to avoid a sinkhole, then spotted the road I wanted back
toward the town, cutting off to our left. The rear end ripped
around on the rain-sluiced pavement as we took the turn. The road
was dirt but well-packed and not too bad as yet. I opened the
engine as far as she’d go.

“
We’ll see,” I said. “I want to
talk with that family first. They’ve got to know something. People
who are skinned by a man stick together. Anyway, they’re apt to
hold council.”

“
You sound like a senator.” She
placed her hands beneath the waistband of my swimming
trunks.

“
Don’t,” I said.

“
I’m just warming my hands.” She
wriggled her fingers. “Don’t you like it?” She squirmed closer.
“You’ve got to get some pants, Eric. I’d lend you mine, but . .
.”

I heaved an inward sight of relief. So long as
she stayed like that, it was all right. It could be plenty bad with
a hysterical woman on my hands. “Didn’t know you wore any,” I said,
and swung the car off on another road that would take us past
Cypress Landing. We were in pine country now.

I had placed the forty-five on the seat beside
me. Leda pulled it up from beneath her. “Some gat,” she said. “Or
do you call it a rod?”

“
I want you to tell me where the
Hewitts live.”

“
Right where they did before. They
just moved over the line of their land after Frank took it away
from them. They built a shack.”

I knew where it was, beyond Cypress Landing
about five miles in more pine country. It wouldn’t take us long to
get there.

This thing had to work itself out. Fast. If
the Hewitts seemed okay and knew nothing, then we’d have to head
for Frank’s cabin. Until I thought of something better. And until I
could rid myself of the prompting in the back of my head, saying,
“The dream, remember, Eric? You were asleep out there on the beach.
Did you dream?”

I remembered Norma’s flashing legs in the
headlights of the car as we’d come out of the sand road. What had
she wanted? Probably just calling my name. She would think the
worst when she heard what had happened. I couldn’t blame her for
that. She’d had a raw deal.

We came out on a stretch of main
road.

“
Going to have to run on this for
about a mile,” I said. “And we’d better get some gas at the first
station.”

Her fingers tightened on my arm. “Should we
take the chance? They may be broadcasting descriptions.”

“
We’ve got to take the chance.” I
pointed to the gauge. It showed empty, the needle wavering. We were
probably running on aroma.

I got to thinking about Burkette. By now he
was after us, trailing like the bloodhound he was, and cursing
himself and everybody else. If I knew this country well, he knew it
equally well, or better. He’d hunted every inch of the land for
miles in all directions, and he was a backwoodsman at heart. A dead
shot with any kind of gun, hard man on the trail, he spared quarter
to no man and least of all himself.

I knew what I was dealing with. He was mad
clear through me by now, and chances were he’d shoot on sight if he
glimpsed me.

I didn’t want to kill anybody. All I wanted
was freedom now, freedom and the rest of my life with Leda. I’d
straighten that life out now, too. For rights.

“
There’s a gas station up ahead,”
Leda said. “I’ll make a dash for the ladies’ room while you fill
up.”

“
All right. But be sure it’s a
dash.”

It was small place, with two pumps. Rain
silvered the scene and I imagined the guy running it would howl
plenty when we drove up. It was a wonder he was open.

As I drew up beside the pumps, Leda swung her
door open and ran for the side of the station itself. She leaped
puddles through the rain with her hair showing copper in the
lights. I knew what must be going on inside her, knew how she must
feel, yet she was holding up. Because she knew about the dream,
too. She had the stuff, all right. There hadn’t been a
whimper.

The round-faced attendant came to the car with
a slicker pulled to his ears. He was soaked.

“
What’ll it be?”

I told him to fill it up, then remembered I
was broke. I didn’t say anything. Leda had to have some
money.

“
That’ll be five and a half,” he
said. He peered in the window and thrust out a dripping
hand.

“
Wife’s got the money,” I said.
“She’ll be right along.”

He stood there in the rain. I knew he was
swearing under his breath. Still she didn’t come.

Finally, after what seemed an hour, she
appeared, running toward the car. She got in, slammed the
door.

“
Money,” I said.
“Quickly!”

“
Money?” She looked at me, her eyes
wide. “Oh, Lord.”

Something went bang inside me. Then she
started fishing in her coat pockets. She came up with a five and
three ones in a crumpled wad.

“
Here.” I gave the man six dollars
and gunned the car out of there. He would remember us, that was
sure.

“
Darling,” Leda said. “Sorry to be
so long. But I got you something. Look!”

She pulled a crumpled bundle of something from
beneath her coat. “A pair of overalls,” she said. “They were
hanging on a nail in the men’s room.”

“
What were you doing in
there?”

“
I just peeked in. Stop the car and
put ’em on.”

I did. It was getting plenty cold. They were
grease-stained and I was certain they were the attendant’s
overalls. This would mark us for sure. But it couldn’t matter now.
I felt better with them on.

Fifteen minutes later we crawled along the
muddy road opposite the Hewitt’s land, or what once had been their
land. Through the vicious streams of rain ahead I glimpsed a
lighted window.

“
This is it,” Leda said. “Just a
shack. See, that’s where they used to live.”

“
Yeah.” We passed a dark house,
thrust against the pouring landscape, and I slowed down by the
shack just beyond a fence. There was a driveway. I turned in, then
slammed on the brakes. A big man in a Stetson ran toward
us.

“
Burkette!”

“
Garth! Damn it! That’s him!”
Burkette bellowed.